April 9 @ 8:00 am - 9:15 am

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These weekly sessions are organized by the SME Finance Forum to provide our members with opportunities to share and learn from each other’s experiences in a continuous and real-time basis. The third roundtable of these series will be held on Thursday, April 9, 2020, at 8:00 a.m. EST, to discuss mitigation efforts by financial institutions and FinTech companies operating in China and other Asian countries.

Join us for a joint presentation by Brian Wong, Vice President of Global Initiatives at Alibaba, and Meng Yan, Global Head of International Partnerships, at Ant Financial/MYBank. The speakers will share their experiences on how their integrated financing and market development services, by leveraging platforms, helped SMEs through the COVID-19 crisis. After the presentations, the discussants will share their insights and experiences, and address questions and concerns. In particular, Microcred China will also share how leveraging lessons learned from the China experience was key to establish their crisis teams.

Speakers

Brian A. Wong is the Vice President, Global Initiatives, at Alibaba Group Member, Alibaba Academic Council. Brian is an internet executive with over 20 years of management experience in e-commerce and digital media in Greater China, SE Asia, India, the US, and Europe. He presently serves as Vice President of Globalization Initiatives, where his present scope of work focuses on creating capacity building programs for governments and entrepreneurs to demonstrate how e-commerce can promote inclusive development in emerging markets. During his fifteen-year tenure with the firm, Brian served as the Special Assistant to the Chairman for international affairs, the Executive Director of the Alibaba Global Leadership Academy (AGLA), led the company’s global sales, marketing, and business development operations, and spearheaded Alibaba.com’s international expansion. Brian originally joined the company as its 52nd employee. In previous roles, Brian has held executive positions at the McGraw-Hill Companies and served as Special Assistant to Mayor Willie L. Brown of San Francisco. He is also Founder and Chairman of the digital media platform RADII (www.radiichina.com), an initiative dedicated to bridging understanding between China and the world. Brian has been an advisor to various governments on e-commerce strategies and has been featured as a speaker at international conferences e.g. World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos, the B20, the ASEAN World Economic Forum, the UNCTAD E-commerce Week, was an advisor on CNBC’s TV series “Pop-up Start-up” and a technical consultant for the HBO television series “Silicon Valley”. Brian is a graduate of Swarthmore College, the Johns Hopkins (SAIS)-Nanjing Center, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Swarthmore College Council on Presidential Initiatives, a former member of the Wharton School Alumni Board, and a director of the 1990 Institute. Brian was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is a China Fellow with the Aspen Institute.

Meng Yan is the Global Head of International Partnerships, Senior Advisor to Chairman at Ant Financial Services Group. Ms. Yan is leading Ant Financial’s international cooperation and partnerships, aiming to foster joint efforts with global partners to promote digital financial inclusion. She also plays the role of senior advisor and sherpa to Eric Jing, Ant Financial Chairman on the UN Digital Financing Taskforce. Over the past two decades, Ms. Yan has accumulated solid experience in financial inclusion in emerging markets. From 2006 to 2018, she worked with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. She served as Principal Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager, responsible for IFC’s financial markets investment in Asia and global portfolio management. She has led a number of innovations in climate finance, gender finance, trade finance, and fund mobilization. She began her career with Bank of China as the Chief of Risk Management Division, Financial Institutions Department. She was also a member of the Bank of China Credit Review Committee. Ms. Yan received her B.A. and M.A. in international finance from the Central University of Finance and Economics.

Discussants

Bodo Lieberam is the Chief Executive Officer of Microcred China/Baobab. Bodo was appointed Microcred China’s CEO in March 2017. Reporting to the Baobab Group’s Chief Executive Officer, Bodo’s responsibility is to ensure that Microcred China continues reaching a dominant place in a rapidly changing market environment, by digitalizing the whole loan process and by establishing new partnerships with internet platforms. Bodo has been working for Microcred for 15 years. He was particularly involved in the creation and development of several subsidiaries, the most recent one being Microcred Tunisia, and in the optimization of the operations through digital tools. He joined Microcred in 2005 and held several CEO positions within the Microcred network. Prior to joining Microcred, Bodo was General Manager of NovoBanco SARL, Mozambique, where he supervised 6 branches and 250 employees, and President & CEO at Micro Enterprise Bank, Philippines. Prior to this, he served as a consultant for the opening of a new microfinance bank in Macedonia and was a Branch Manager of FEFAD Bank (now ProCredit Bank) in Albania on behalf of Internationale Projekt Consult GmbH, Frankfurt.

Momina Aijazuddin is IFC’s Global Head of Microfinance/ Financial Inclusion and works also as Principal Investment Officer in IFC’s Financial Institution Group (FIG). She covers IFC’s microfinance investment and advisory activities globally, which exceeds cumulative investments of US$6 billion worldwide with over 300 MFIs, in addition to advisory services worth $63.7 million in 68 projects across 30 countries. This includes oversight of the work in Responsible Forum (which IFC manages for the GPFI/ G20) and leading projects in digital transformation for MSME focused Banks and MFIs. She is leading IFC’s efforts to scale up private sector commitments with strategic partners in the digital finance, microfinance and fintech space committed to achieving the World Bank Group’s Universal Financial Access by 2020. She was also a core member of the drafting team for the G20 Digital Financial Inclusion Principles. She manages the IFC Boulder strategic partnership and hosts the training for Boulder- IFC Strategic Leadership in Microfinance which has trained almost 350 leaders in the financial inclusion space. Momina brings over 25 years of investment transaction experience in financial services, microfinance, and manufacturing sectors in over 60 countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, MENA, and LAC regions. She has spent the last four years heavily engaged with IFC’s financial inclusion efforts in China; including leading banks and MFIs in digital transformation and fintech players. She was recognized as Global 100 top 100 women in 2019 FINTECH by Lattice80, a fintech hub. Momina has served on the Supervisory Board of the Microfinance Initiative for Asia (MIFA), a US$175 million debt fund, launched by IFC and KFW and managed by Blue Orchard and is currently on the Board of Microfinance Enhancement Facility ( MEF).

This online discussion is by invitation only. Prior registration is required to attend the discussion.